Originally I was going to share this with a new friend of mine, a well read Englishman.
But when taken in the context of our correspondence, it seemed derivative and too lengthy.
So I'll spare him the terrible fate of hearing me prattle on about my unconstrained musings.
That being said, I still hope he manages to read this!
We have a fair amount to cover here, but I think you'd take interest in a discussion on something I've very recently picked up on, given how you have an appreciation for the creation of ideas and their historical/philosophical context. I've been reading up on the structuralism, as it pertains to philosophy. Initially structuralism was founded in a linguistic context with the advent of a field called semiotics, pioneered by the linguist de Saussure.
Semiotics is essentially the study of signs; to explain via example, the word 'android' (written or spoken, or even an illustration of an android) is a signifier of the mental conception of an android, the signified. An actual android that you can take on missions and have fight for you is called the referent. An observation that de Saussure had was that there is no good, logical connection between the signifier 'android' and it's actual referent. There's nothing inherent to a cute, white-haired, blindfolded, synthetic shota that would suggest that it should be signified by the arbitrary letter combination of a-n-d-r-o-i-d. It's still not clear how languages are created and developed because of this fact, but it does seem that it takes a consensus among people to settle on a particular word to be the signifier of something. Part of that consensus includes agreeing that 'android' doesn't refer to an automobile, a dog, water, or anything else. Actually, if you think about any given word, you can sort of define it entirely via exclusion. 'Android' means an actual android because it doesn't mean anything else. I wanted to mention this because it comes into play later.
Another idea of de Saussure is that language only conveys meaning by following specific rules when arranging words together into sentences; as you might have guessed, these are the rules of grammar and syntax. This is, as far as I can tell, the basic idea of structuralism and things get REALLY interesting when you apply this idea to, well, ideas. Take any idea from history, any idea at all. For example let us consider the simple case of the intercontinental ballistic missile. You cannot conceive of the idea of an ICBM if the idea of missiles didn't precede it. You cannot conceive of the idea of missiles if the idea of rocketry didn't precede it. You cannot conceive of rocketry if a theory of combustion didn't precede it, etc. In short, ideas only make sense if you have the prerequisite ideas in place, in the proper order. In our example of the ICBM it seems kind of obvious, especially since we're both scientifically inclined individuals and it's relatively easy to note the iterative progression of scientific endeavor. But in less obvious cases? Western democracy is a great example of this. Most people wouldn't think it (partially because, as you mentioned, most aren't as well-read), but Western democracy is predicated upon Judeo-Christian values: namely that which posits that each and every individual is a sovereign entity in his or her own right. This idea, before Judaism and Christianity, was largely reserved for kings and rulers. Western democracy, as we know it, wouldn't have made much sense if the Judeo-Christian tradition had not come before it.
You must forgive me if it seems as if I'm skipping about, but I swear, it serves a purpose. Okay, so structuralism was originally developed in a linguistic context. Words (i.e. signs composed of a signifier/signified) are arranged into sentences which convey meaning. Sentences are, in turn, arranged into paragraphs and paragraphs could be arranged to form stories and narratives. Naturally, structuralism crept it's way into literature. To be honest, I'm not too interested in structuralism and how it applies to a literary context, as it seems fairly intuitive and straight-forward to me. But what really caught my attention while I was reading about this was the intellectual movement that took hold in France during the 1960s in response to structuralism: post-structuralism. It's also referred to post-modernism, if I'm not mistaken. This is where I reach the limits of my knowledge, as I'm still investigating post-modernist philosophy, but from what I've read and heard so far, it has some fairly heavy critiques towards structuralism; some of them involving the ideas I've presented to you before. Take the idea that there is no logical connection between the referent and a word, that words only take on meaning based off of this exclusionary principle. The post-modernist critique is that these words truly have no meaning since, functionally, there are an infinite amount of things that this word doesn't refer to. You can never really get to the bottom of it. Because words do not carry any meaning, sentences cannot carry meaning, paragraphs cannot carry meaning, and ultimately, narratives cannot carry meaning. The entire structure falls apart because the basic unit for meaning is meaningless. I really wish I were more keen on literary analysis, so that I could analyze some familiar literary work through this post-modern lens to see if I can gain a new appreciation for it, but that's a passing fascination. What seems of more importance to me is how this post-modernist critique applies to a philosophical/historical context. The examples I mentioned before, about ICBMs and Western democracy, those ideas and their constituent ideas are basically technological and socio-philosophical narratives respectively. What are the implications of this post-modernist critique when applied here?
That was fairly long-winded and could be a bit of a derivative to our present discussion, but I got a tiny bit excited and would really like to know your thoughts on that final question.
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